The Imagination of Faith

Faith is not just a matter of logic and learning but of imagination and emotion and culture.

I read that passage from Viral by Leonard Sweet last night. I stopped to consider it. So often, at least in my church body, we keep a lot of emotion out. We react to churches where emotion seems to reign supreme, and in many times we overreact by keeping emotion out in general. Logic and learning seem to reign supreme, though it is logic submitted to God’s Word.

And then we have this blog. We exercise our faith not just in logic and learning. We also exercise our faith in imagination and emotion and within our culture. In this blog we take our faith for a walk through genre fiction and writing in general. It’s not that Jesus commanded us, “Go into all the world and make disciples by baptizing them and teaching them to obey and telling them nifty genre stories.” It’s just that our faith, our worldview, seeps into everything we do. Well, we happen to love writing and genre fiction.

Faith isn’t just logic. It’s not just cold calculations. It’s also imagination. God is bigger than our heads or our hearts, and sometimes we try to express a sliver of that magnitude. Yes, I will chain that imagination to God’s Word, to the Bible, because that is how God has revealed himself. Any imagination contrary to that may be imagination, but it’s not being employed in a way that brings glory to God.

Yet… we can use our imaginations to glorify God. And why shouldn’t we? After all, faith isn’t just logic.

Published by Jon

I'm a pastor in Wisconsin. Constantly writing, whether it be fiction or sermons or anything in between. Husband and father. Over all this, Christian, willing and joyful servant to good master Jesus.
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